Conner Gets Extra Security After Man Telephones a Threat Against His Life
An Australian television station received a call from an anonymous man who threatened to shoot America’s Cup skipper Dennis Conner, a police spokesman said.
The caller, believed to be an Australian in his early 20s, telephoned the Melbourne studios of Channel 10 Tuesday morning, claiming that Conner, the 44-year-old helmsman of the San Diego’s Stars & Stripes, would be shot rather than be allowed to remove the America’s Cup from Australia.
The caller said he would be leaving Melbourne for Perth later Tuesday.
Perth police and the Special America’s Cup Police Division in Fremantle was notified of the threat and was investigating, the police spokesman said.
A spokesman for the America’s Cup Police Division, Inspector Neville Thorpe, said extra security had been placed around the Stars & Stripes skipper as a precaution, and that Conner had been told of the threat.
Channel 10 security guards, who answered the call, immediately alerted police. The guards spoke to the man for about two minutes.
The threat on Conner’s life came after a hoax Monday when a man telephoned a Sydney television station to say that a bomb had been placed aboard Kookaburra III.
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